The Evidence

The gallery hummed with unusual urgency.

Ilyra noticed it the moment she entered on Evander’s arm, her yellow gloves bright against the pale silk of her morning dress. The nobles clustered in tight knots rather than their usual drifting orbits. Faces pale. Urgent whispers cutting off as she passed. Something had broken loose in the night, and the court had gathered to pick at its carcass.

“Curious,” Evander murmured. He walked close, but his hands remained at his sides. She found herself reaching for his elbow, anchoring herself against the tension in the room. He gave her a brief glance as her hand wrapped around his arm.

Near the tall windows overlooking the eastern gardens, Lady Ashworth stood at the centre of the largest cluster. The elderly countess’s silver hair caught the early summer light, and her expression, usually so composed, had cracked into something raw. Papers passed from hand to hand around her, nobles reading and recoiling.

Ilyra caught fragments as she moved through the gallery. Slums. Bodies. Transformations.

Her stomach tightened. She knew what those documents contained. She had helped position them to reach exactly the right person. The right moment.

A young lord stumbled past her toward a pillar, one hand pressed to his mouth. He had been reading over someone’s shoulder. Whatever he had seen, it had undone him.

Near the fireplace, Lady Mersham swayed and would have fallen if her husband had not caught her arm. The Countess Varen stood rigid, her fan pressed to her chest as if it could ward off what she was hearing. Someone demanded to know if it was true, if it could possibly be true, and no one could answer because the documents answered for themselves.

The descriptions, she thought. The drawings. Clinical renderings of what had been done to small bodies in the name of alchemical progress.

The horror was half genuine. She had known what would be found when she guided the evidence toward Lady Ashworth. Bodies from the slums. Orphans taken from foundling homes. Failed alchemical transformations that left subjects broken in ways she could not bring herself to imagine too closely. But knowing and seeing the court’s reaction were different things. Bile rose at the memory of that clinical language: dosages and responses and failures. The abstraction had become real in their faces.

She watched Lady Ashworth’s hands tremble as the countess turned a page.

“Children,” Lady Ashworth said, and her voice carried across the gallery’s marble floors. The whispers died. “They were children.”

Silence spread outward like frost. Ilyra stood still, aware of every eye in the gallery, aware of how she should look in this moment. She let her face show shock. Concern.

Evander’s thumb traced a small circle against her elbow through the fabric of her sleeve. Approval.

“We should observe,” he said, pitched only for her. “But not yet join.”

She nodded. Watched. The gallery filled with the particular grief of people who had just learned that someone they knew, someone they had laughed with at salons and applauded at poetry readings, had dissolved children in alchemical baths.

Cassian. Her brother. The cultured prince.

He had never loved her. Had barely noticed she existed except to dismiss her as nothing, the quiet sister with her books and her awkward silences. She had grown up in his shadow without ever sharing even a single smile with him. She could watch his destruction unfold and feel only the cold satisfaction of justice served. All other feelings must be buried, removed. Unnecessary.

Justice, she told herself. This is justice.

The council had been called into emergency session.

Ilyra and Evander found a vantage point in the antechamber, positioned near a door left slightly ajar. Not officially present, but able to observe. Mira had accompanied them as far as propriety required, then faded into the corridor’s shadows, ever the silent witness. Her maid’s gaze pressed against Ilyra’s back.

Through the gap, voices rose and fell. Councillors she had known all her life, their usual measured tones shattered into something rawer.

“The evidence is incontrovertible.” Lord Varen’s voice, thick with outrage. “The ledgers alone would condemn him. But this, these records of, of subjects…”

“Workhouses.” Another voice, trembling. “Orphanages. He took them, and nobody asked any questions.”

“And when they died?” That was Lady Ashworth again. She must have been summoned to give testimony. “Where are the bodies? Does anyone know what he did with the bodies?”

Silence. Then someone began to weep, a thin keening that rose and fell like a wounded animal.

Ilyra’s hands found each other, fingers intertwining. She had known. She had known about the experiments since Evander first showed her the documents. But hearing it spoken aloud in the council chamber, hearing the weight of it settle over men and women who had never suspected, she understood something she had not before.

I did this.

Not the experiments. Never the experiments. Those were Cassian’s sin. But she had chosen when and how the truth would emerge. She had selected Lady Ashworth as the recipient because the countess’s horror would be genuine, her moral authority unimpeachable. She had shaped this moment like a sculptor shapes clay.

The truth had to come out, she told herself. Someone had to expose him.

The weeping continued. Someone was reading names aloud. A list. Subjects.

“Summon the prince.” Her father’s voice, the Emperor, sounding older than she had ever heard him. “He will answer for this. Now.”

Movement in the chamber. Footsteps. The door across the room opening and closing.

Evander leaned close, his breath warm against her ear. “Waves crest before they break.”

Nothing more. But she understood.

Her pulse hammered in her throat, her wrists, her fingertips. Would he want me to wait longer? No. He would trust me to read the room.

Minutes passed. The council’s murmurs rose again, outrage building on outrage. Then the door opened, and Cassian entered.

She could not see him clearly through the crack, but she heard the change in the room. The sharp intake of breath. The shuffling of robes as councillors drew back. She could tell he walked among them like a man entering a salon, and that composure, that cultivated elegance, was the most damning thing of all.

“Your Imperial Majesty,” Cassian said. His voice was smooth. Amused, even. “I understand there has been some confusion regarding certain charitable endeavours of mine.”

“Charitable.” Lord Varen spat the word. “You call this charity?”

A rustle of papers. Someone thrust the documents toward him. Ilyra imagined his face as he saw them, those careful records of suffering that he had never expected to surface.

The silence stretched.

“I see.” Cassian’s voice had changed. The amusement was gone. Something harder lay beneath. “I see that someone has been very thorough in their… research.”

“You deny nothing?” Lady Ashworth’s voice shook with grief. “These children, Your Imperial Highness. These children.”

“I deny that this is the appropriate venue for such accusations. Surely any gentleman accused of such things deserves the opportunity to respond through proper channels rather than this, this theatrical ambush.”

“Theatrical?” The word echoed back from somewhere in the chamber. “He calls this theatrical.”

The voices rose. Councillors shouting over one another. Demands for immediate arrest. For justice. For blood.

Ilyra gripped the doorframe. This was different from Dorian’s quiet collapse. Dorian had been confused, pathetic, easily led away. Cassian stood at the centre of the chaos like a man who still believed he could win. Who still believed he had weapons left to use.

A slight pressure at her elbow. Evander’s head tilted almost imperceptibly toward the door.

Ilyra stepped forward and pushed it open.

All eyes turned to her.

She stood in the threshold of the council chamber, aware of every gaze, every calculation happening behind those stares. The quiet princess. The emerged hermit. What was she doing here?

She had dressed carefully this morning without quite admitting why. The pale yellow of her gown suggested warmth, approachability. Her light gloves matched, elegant without ostentation. She looked like what she needed to look like: a young woman grieving, concerned, but above all reasonable.

“My lords. My ladies.” Her voice was steady. The socialite training held. “I share your horror. These crimes demand answer.”

Lord Varen’s mouth opened, perhaps to dismiss her. She did not give him the chance.

“But surely there must be a fair trial. We cannot abandon justice in our grief.” She moved into the room, each step measured and deliberate. “What separates us from the monsters we condemn, if not our commitment to the law? If Prince Cassian is guilty, and I pray he is not, then let the evidence speak at trial. Let the realm see the truth.”

The words landed in the chamber’s stunned silence. Others had screamed; she pleaded for process. They demanded spectacle; she requested dignity.

Some of the councillors nodded. She could see them recalculating, adjusting their understanding of the youngest princess.

Reasonable. Composed. Merciful.

Her parents sat at the head of the chamber, and for a moment she met her mother’s eyes. The Empress looked exhausted, fragile, aged beyond her years by yet another scandal. But there was something in her expression that might have been relief. Finally, one of her children spoke sense.

“The princess speaks wisely,” Lady Ashworth said. Her voice was still rough with grief, but she squared her shoulders. “Arrest. Investigation. A proper trial. We must not become the very thing we condemn.”

The council murmured its agreement. The call for immediate blood had been blunted. They would follow process. They would be civilised about destroying her brother.

Guards moved toward Cassian. He did not resist.

But as they reached him, as their hands closed on his arms, he turned his head. His eyes found hers across the chamber.

Ilyra forced herself not to look away.

He stopped directly before her.

The guards paused, uncertain. Their grip on his arms remained firm, but they were trained to defer to royalty, and an arrested prince asking for a moment with his sister fell into murky territory.

Cassian was still composed. Still cultured. But something had cracked beneath the surface. She could see it in the set of his jaw, the slight tremor at the corner of his mouth. He knew. He knew what those documents meant, knew what the trial would reveal, knew that his careful facade was about to be stripped away before the entire realm.

“Sister,” he said, and his voice was almost gentle. Not the contempt she expected.

“You’ve grown since Dorian left.”

The words landed like blows. She could not read them. Was it observation? Accusation? Had he somehow, in his arrogance, caught a glimpse of the pattern forming around him?

She forced her voice steady. “I’m sorry this is happening.”

His smile was thin over something darker. “Are you?”

The question hung in the air between them. She could not look away from his eyes. He was searching for something in her face, some confirmation of a suspicion he could not quite name. Two brothers gone in months. The quiet sister stepping forward with her reasonable words and her moderate pleas. He saw something. He had to see something.

But he could not name it.

“I hope the trial is fair,” she said. The words tasted bitter. “I hope the evidence is weighed properly.”

“Oh, I’m certain it will be.” His smile thinned further. “Weighed. Positioned. Presented just so.” He leaned closer, and the guards’ grips tightened. “Tell me, little sister. When did you learn to play the game?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“No.” He held her gaze a moment longer. “I don’t suppose you would.”

The guards nudged him forward. The moment broke. Cassian walked past her, his shoulders straight, his bearing still that of a prince even as they led him toward the cells. He did not look back.

Ilyra stood very still in the council chamber’s silence. Her hands were trembling, but they were gloved, and hidden in the folds of her dress, so no one could see.

He saw something, she thought.

When she turned, she found Evander watching from the doorway. His expression was mild, approving. He inclined his head slightly, and she understood that she had performed well.

She went to him. What else could she do?

Evening had settled over the palace by the time Ilyra retreated to her private sitting room. The day’s composure was cracking in private, splintering along lines she had not known existed.

Mira sat in the corner, in her usual chair, going through the usual motions. Her presence was both comfort and constraint. A chaperone. A witness. A servant who could not speak of what she saw.

Ilyra found herself studying her maid’s bent head. Mira came from the bread district, from those same slums where Cassian had found his subjects. Her brother had died in the riot, crushed beneath the collapsing roof of a burning building. Had she known any of the children whose names were read in council today? Had she lost neighbours, friends, children she had played with in the streets?

The thought surfaced and Ilyra pushed it away. She could not afford to wonder. Could not afford to see Mira as anything other than the needle moving through cloth, the silent presence in the corner. To see her as a person with grief of her own would be to see too much.

Ilyra paced before the windows. The city below was quiet, unaware that its prince sat in a cell awaiting trial. That somewhere in the slums, families who had lost children to his experiments would learn, finally, what had become of their missing loved ones.

You did this, she thought. You made this happen.

He deserved it. She finally believed it truly.

Evander arrived as the lamps were being lit. He dismissed the footman with a glance and settled into a chair with the ease of a man who belonged in every room he entered. The door remained ajar, propriety observed. Mira’s needle continued its rhythm.

“He looked at me like he knew,” Ilyra said, unable to keep the words in any longer. “Like he saw something.”

A pause. She watched his face, searching for the reassurance she had come to need more than she liked to admit. Did I handle it correctly? Did I say too much?

“He saw what you chose to show him,” he said at last. “A sister who could meet his gaze without flinching. Someone who has learned to hold herself under pressure.” A pause. “You handled the council well. Lady Ashworth will remember your composure.”

The praise washed her over with warmth like the rays of a dawning summer sun. Not comfort this time, but recognition. He saw her growing, her strength, her capability. Yes. That is what Cassian saw. A sister who had learned to stand.

“He said I’d grown. Since Dorian.”

“You have.” A pause, as if the observation required no elaboration.

She stopped pacing. Her hands found each other, fingers intertwining in the fabric of her dress. “He asked if I was sorry. The way he said it…”

Evander rose from his chair. Crossed the room to her. His movements were unhurried, graceful, and when he reached her, he lifted her chin with one finger.

She leaned into the contact. Silk against her skin, his gaze holding hers. The only touch she wanted anymore.

He said nothing. The silence stretched, shaped by his stillness.

“When I was small,” she heard herself say, “I used to watch Cassian at dinners. He was so elegant. So assured. I wanted him to notice me the way he noticed the artists and poets who flattered him.” She did not know why she was telling him this. The words came unbidden, drawn out by his patient silence. “I practised witty remarks in the mirror. I memorised poetry I thought he might like. He never looked at me twice.”

Evander’s expression did not change, but his attention sharpened almost imperceptibly. Listening. Holding space.

“I thought there was something wrong with me,” she continued. “That I was not interesting enough, not clever enough. I spent years trying to become someone he would see.” A bitter laugh caught in her throat. “He sees me now.”

“He does,” Evander agreed. His voice held no judgment.

She had never told anyone this. Not her mother, not her tutors, certainly not her siblings. Yet here, with his hands wrapped around hers and the lamplight soft on his face, the confession felt natural. Inevitable. He was the only one who understood what she carried.

She looked up at him. She needed something to be true.

“The experiments were real,” she said slowly, finding the words on her own. Or were they his words? She could no longer tell. “The bodies. The orphans. I did not invent them.”

“No.” His voice was soft. “You did not.”

The words settled over her like a blanket. Like permission.

“Then why…” She trailed off.

She could not name it. The feeling that something had shifted. That she had crossed a line she could not see. Cassian’s words echoed: When did you learn to play the game?

“Nothing,” she said at last. “I’m tired.”

He kissed her forehead. A chaste press of lips, nothing more. The tension in her shoulders loosened. The doubt began to ease.

“Rest,” he said. His voice was soft. Almost tender. “The trial will be difficult.”

She nodded, already missing his proximity. He stepped back, and she had to stop herself from reaching after him.

He left her standing by the window. His footsteps faded down the corridor.

For a long moment, Ilyra did not move. The city below was quiet. Somewhere, Cassian sat in a cell, waiting for the justice she had orchestrated.

The experiments were real, she told herself. I did not invent them.

This was true. It was not the whole truth. But it was enough truth to let her keep standing.

Slowly, deliberately, she began to remove her gloves.

First the left, then the right. The silk lining slipped away from her fingers, leaving her hands bare in the lamplight. She turned them over, studying her palms, the lines that crossed them, the delicate veins beneath the skin.

She had positioned documents. Built an image. Stood in a council chamber and shaped the court’s response. She had watched her brother led away in chains and felt satisfaction beneath the performance of concern.

Her hands looked the same as always. Why did she expect them to look different?

“Shall I draw a bath, Your Highness?” Mira’s voice, from the corner. Soft. Distant.

Ilyra looked up. Their eyes met for the space of a breath, and in Mira’s gaze she saw something that made her look away first. Not accusation, exactly. Something quieter. Something that looked like grief.

“Yes.” Her voice sounded strange to her own ears. “Please.”

She folded her gloves neatly on the windowsill. Tomorrow she would put on a another pair. Tomorrow she would continue being the reasonable princess, the moderate voice, the merciful sister who had pleaded for justice over bloodlust.

But tonight, for just a moment, she looked at her bare hands and wondered what they had become.